Six

As I approached the house, I saw that Jimmy was standing in the kitchen, gesticulating pretty forcefully. By the time I heard the shouting, I handed Jai Li off to Trisha and asked her to cover for me while I went in.

Trisha grinned. “I won’t deal with them when he’s in a tirade,” she said, hugging Jai Li to her chest. “I’ll take her and the other kids over to the barracks to start settling down. They can play cards.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Trisha. We’ll come get her as soon as I figure out what’s going on this time.”

I hated when Jimmy and Katie fought. I’d thought they’d gotten past that little spat over the ring now that the necromancer was defeated. This was likely a new issue. I sighed and opened the door to the house, letting Jimmy’s voice roll over me.

“Don’t be such a damned child,” he was bellowing.

Awesome. Just what we needed on this night.

Deidre made a face at me as I stepped into the kitchen—somewhere between run-for-your-life and get-me-out-of-here. A shame I was learning to gather that much from the set of her face and the nods.

“What’s going on?” I asked loud enough to catch both Katie and Jimmy’s attention.

Jimmy turned to me, his face livid. “You were with her,” he said, pointing his meaty finger in my face.

“With her where?” I asked, calmly.

His nostrils flared and he blinked a couple of times before pulling his finger out of my face. “You met with the Mordred folks,” he growled, swinging his attention back to Katie. For a moment, I thought he was going to hit her.

“Settle down, Jim,” I said, taking a step between him and Katie. “Have you lost your mind?”

He shoved me in the shoulder, his fist up.

I stepped into him, grabbed his shirt in both of my hands, and slammed him back into the fridge. “You need to calm the fuck down,” I said, pushing way from him and leaving him off balance. All that swinging a hammer and wrastlin’ with horses gave me an edge.

He took one step toward me when Deidre barked out, “James, stop it.”

That was the secret sauce. The fight seemed to fall away as his shoulders sagged and he lowered his arms. “You had no right,” he said, the anger barely under control.

“No right?” Katie said. “They had mom and dad’s wedding rings. Did you know that? Did you know that some elf died trying to steal those rings from their hotel room?”

Jimmy swallowed before answering. “No, I had no idea.”

“It wasn’t an official visit,” I said, trying to be as reasonable as I could. “One of their people reached out to us. He claims he’d be in big trouble if his people found out he went around channels.”

“Yeah, he works for a bunch of idiots like Jimmy here,” Katie groused.

“Stop it,” Deidre said, putting her hand on Katie’s arm. “Not tonight. Let this go.”

Katie whirled to face her, tears streaming down her face. “When then, huh, Dee? When do we talk about shit? When Jimmy’s had his nap?”

“I’m your Seneschal,” Jimmy growled.

“No,” Katie said, turning back to him. “I’m not one of your little soldiers you can boss around. I’m your sister. And this is as much my house as it is yours. Mom and dad left it to both of us. So, you can get off your damn high horse and leave me the fuck alone.”

That was news to me. Made sense; but Jimmy didn’t like hearing it.

She turned and stalked down the hallway. Jimmy started to go after her, but I stepped in front of him again. “Let her go,” I said. “You need to calm down and tell me how this got so far out of control.”

Jimmy looked down at me, then turned to look at Deidre. She nodded and he stepped back, pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down.

I took that as a good sign and did the same.

“She’s up to something,” he said, making two fists on top of the table. “I caught her sneaking around the house a couple of times and it’s just creepy. I don’t have anything to hide from her.”

“Beyond the ring and whatever those other two statues are in your safe deposit box, right?”

“Don’t you start, too,” he said.

The family was coming apart at the seams. It had only been a year since the dragons went live in our communal psyche. We’d lost a lot of good people trying to fight back the crazy shit in the world. I just never thought I’d see Jimmy coming this unglued.

“So, what if she’s poking around?” I asked.

“It’s the journal,” Deidre said. “Her mom’s diary, the one that almost killed Jimmy.

“What about it?”

“It’s missing,” Jimmy said. “When I asked her about it she got pretty ugly.”

“It’s like she’s another person,” Deidre said.

I looked at her, then back at Jim. Was she another person? They’ve known her a lot longer than I have, but I was around her more and in more intimate situations. I didn’t think she was a different person, like she was possessed or anything. But she was definitely changed by the events of the last year. Who wouldn’t be?

“She’s having a hard time,” I said, confirming their fears by the look they exchanged. “The doctors still don’t know what’s causing her to be so wiped out all the time, and the nose bleeds haven’t stopped.”

“I think it’s the diary,” Jimmy said.

“No,” Deidre said, shaking her head. “This started before I showed her the diary.”

Jim glanced in her direction for a second, but looked down at his hands. There was bad blood over that decision. I was not going to step into this marriage, they’d have to come to terms with that on their own.

“It all started out at that house,” Deidre continued. “Something happened when she was out there, the time the witch got trapped out there. I noticed things were different then.”

That far back? I considered her behavior back to last fall, just after her birthday. Things have been crazy for a year. I was having a hard time picking out any particular event that was a change.

“You don’t see it,” Deidre said, patting me on the hand. “You’re with her every day. These changes have been more subtle, building over time. We don’t hardly see her anymore and the differences are noticeable.”

“Like what?” I asked, suddenly very concerned.

“She used to be so damned optimistic,” she said, smiling at Jimmy. “Both of them were.”

Jimmy shrugged but I could tell he was calming down. There was a lot of anger boiling underneath the surface of that man. Anger made you reckless. I knew that first hand.

“But it’s more than that,” Jimmy said, finally. His voice cracking as he spoke. “She doesn’t trust me. I can see it when she looks at me.”

“What? No.” I looked at him, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye. “She loves you.”

“Something’s broken,” he mumbled and pushed his chair back. Neither of us stopped him as he crossed the kitchen and went out the back door.

“He’s right,” Deidre said. “She’s gotten pushy, demanding.”

I thought about our lunch with Charlie Hague. “Has she tried to get you to tell her things? Like she was compelling you?”

Deidre quirked her eyebrows up, questioningly. “No, but Jimmy said something about that, how she had brow beat him into telling her about family stuff, trying to see if he was keeping anything back.”

I sighed. She said she’d done it a time or two before.

“Did she have another nosebleed?”

“Yeah, vomiting and headache,” she said. “Was a couple of weeks ago. She’d come out while you were out with Julie over in Cle Elum.”

I remembered that day. Julie and I had driven over to visit with Frank Rodriguez. We were going to be gone late so Katie and Jai Li had stayed out at Black Briar. Katie had missed school the next day, sick.

“But Jimmy’s losing it, too,” I said. “Is there something else going on that I’m not aware of?”

She smiled at me. “Everything’s changing,” she said. “Gunther has moved Anezka in with him, so he doesn’t come over as often. Stuart is making himself more scarce as well. I think Jim’s just missing his friends, and he’s worried sick about Katie.”

“And the diary?”

She sighed. “I know Katie took it. The girl could never lie to me. She’s got a right to it, but this is just childish behavior. Jimmy’s afraid he’s going to lose her. He won’t admit it publicly, but,” she leaned in, lowering her voice, “he’s been having dreams where she’s calling for help, lost someplace we can’t find her. Night after night, he wakes up agitated. I think he was crying the other morning, but you’d never get him to admit it.” She shook her head.

“Damn.” I sat there looking her Deidre. We both loved the remaining members of the Cornett family, and they were both pulling away from us, lost in their own worlds of pain and fear.

“I’ll talk to her,” I said, pushing my chair back.

Deidre waved me toward the hallway. “I expect she’s down in her old room crying her eyes out. Wouldn’t be the first time.”